“I don’t put myself in no danger — besides me cutting my head open a few times, but that’s about it,” said Green, who overcame losing part of a finger from a dunking accident as a child. “Only a few times. In high school I didn’t really know how high I could jump. Now I know how.”

His head is generally safe, but his arms take a beating. After dunking a lot in practice, he often realizes later his wrist is sore, and sometimes his hand or wrist stings after a big one during a game.

“A little bit sometimes, maybe for a few seconds,” he said. “It’s like if you bang your knee on somebody else’s knee, but it’s not to the point where it messes you up for the rest of the game. It just hurts for maybe a couple plays.”

Green’s dunking prowess has made him a popular new player in Miami this season, and he feeds off the crowd reaction.

“It helps me get going,” he said. “It actually gets me going defensively. Dunking is an aggressive play. And when I’m playing with a teammate and I see, for instance, Tyler Johnson go for a crazy dunk, it gets me going.”

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